it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The Three Acts:The initial tableaux: The film is an anthology. Each story is about an aspect (or several) of sexual behaviour.a. Chastity belts and aphrodisiac potions in medieval times in England.b. Gene Wilder as a respected physician who falls in lust with a patient's sheep.c. Italian-speaking Woody Allen trying to be as macho as possible, but cannot initially find the key to his wife's satisfaction.d. A middle class man experiments with women's clothes.e. A game show, filmed in grainy black and white, has panelists attempting to guess the perversion of the guest.f. John Huston as the mad scientist rejected by Masters and Johnson. He's out to prove his strange theories. As a side effect (second part of the vignette), a giant mobile breast is created that terrorises the countryside. Allen and MacRae play a scientist and a journalist covering the action.g. Tony Randall quarterbacks the male brain's attempt to manage bodily resources during a hot romantic date.Delineation of conflicts: In each case, some aspect of sexual behaviour is explored. The vignettes are self-contained. The common thread, though, is that some private behaviour can become public, with consequences varying from embarrassment to jail to death.Resolution: The surfacing of private sexual behaviour is done for comic effect.

In the late 1960s one Dr David Reuben released a book entitled EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX *BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK. Woody Allen's 1972 "movie adaptation" uses the questions of Dr Reuben's question-and-answer format as the titles for 7 comedic sketches all on sexual themes. This was Allen's third conventional film, and his growing importance in Hollywood is evident from the film's all-star cast.The opening "Do Aphrodisiacs Work?", set in medieval times, has Woody Allen as a court jester who seeks to seduce the queen. Most of the humour here consists of anachronism: the jester's jokes are too bad for even a borscht belt comedian, and the dialogue consists of Elizabethian stylings mixed with sexual terminology and crude slang from the present.The following sketch, "What is Sodomy?", is for many viewers the very best. A New York City general practitioner (Gene Wilder) is visited by an Armenian shepherd who begs the doctor to restore the magic to his relationship with a cherished sheep. What ensues, with the doctor descending ever deeper into madness, is made hilarious by Wilder's committed performance and the dialogue is immensely quotable. Another high point of the film is "Why Do Some Women Have Trouble Reaching an Orgasm?". Shot in black and white and with an Italian dialogue, the segment is Allen's homage to the cool ambiance of Antonioni and Fellini. Allen plays a suave, sunglasses-wearing film director who cannot manage to satisfy his wife, played by Louise Lasser, until they begin having risky sex in public places. The fun comes not only in the challenges the man must face in making his wife happy, but also in Allen's ridiculous accent while speaking Italian.In "Are Transvestites Homosexuals?", Lou Jacobi plays a man who sneaks upstairs while at a dinner party in order to wear his hostess' clothes, and subsequently gets himself deeper and deeper in trouble. It's humorous enough, but one wonders if this segment were stronger when the film was first released. Judging from its high frequency in big Hollywood films of the 1960s and early 1970s, cross-dressing must have once been a much funnier concept in that era. The following "What Are Sex Perverts?" is a parody of the game show What's My Line? where a panel of minor celebrities try to guess the perversion of a contestant, who wins $5 for every wrong guess. This is quite funny, but far too brief, as the concept could have been stretched out a bit more."Are the Findings of Doctors and Clinics Who Do Sexual Research and Experiments Accurate?" is a Frankenstein parody where Allen and Heather MacRae play recently acquainted sex researchers who meet a great sexologist (John Carradine), only to discover that he's a diabolical madman. The first half of this segment is pretty funny, as Allen and MacRae make their way through the doctor's castle of horrors. But the second half, when the pair seeks to defeat a giant breast ravaging the countryside, is some of the lamest humour I've seen in some time.The characters of the last segment, "What Happens During Ejaculation?", are personifications of the organs as a man goes on a date with a woman. The brain is depicted as a NASA mission control, with Tony Randall and Burt Reynolds struggling to coordinate bodily functions. They call down to the stomach (men carting off a newly-arrived load of fettucini), and the genitals (blue-collar joes working an enormous pump), as well as other places. Much here will make you chuckle, such as the captured "saboteur" of the man's sexual ambitions, his conscience, depicted as a priest in a Roman collar, and Allen's performance as a sperm cell terrified of making the leap into the unknown. All in all, however, I find this quite dated as well.While my overall impressions is that EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX is quite dated, it's funny enough, and the portions with Allen as an Italian lover and Wilder as a befuddled doctor make it worth seeing at least once.

David Reuben's book was a pop phenomenon, delving into things (in the mainstream) that were taboo for many people. He made it acceptable to carry this book around. Along comes Woody Allen, who take a series of vignettes (that really had nothing to do with the book) and puts it all out there. Fetishism, masturbation, you name it. He puts his putzy character into every role possible and draws in some great character actors as well. We have Gene Wilder who loves sheep, on the street drinking from a bottle of Woolite. Everything that goes on is pushed to its ridiculous limit. One of my favorites is Allen as a sperm paratrooper with all his fellow sperm, sitting in a bench on a plane (ala World War II) waiting to jump into an unknown kind of D-Day. Also, there is a giant breast which parrots the earlier monster/horror movies, chasing Allen and squirting at him. Like his other earlier offerings it's anything-goes humor and if it doesn't stick, something else will come along. This isn't one of my favorites but there's enough to keep it going.

"Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)" (is this a long title for a movie or is this a long title for a movie?) is the most ambitious and expensive film that Woody Allen had made up to that point (1972) in his career. Here he gets his first (of many) casts filled with famous actors in big or small roles, there are special effects that hold up surprisingly well (especially in the laboratory sketch), and Allen experiments with all sorts of gimmicks: from all-Italian dialogue in one episode to black and white photography and intentionally bad picture quality in another. However, "Everything...." is also IMO the least successful of Woody's first films, at least in terms of laughs; it never comes close to matching "Bananas". While there are some characteristically witty Woody lines here (like "Before we know it, Renaissance will be here and we'll all be painting" or "Now we owe THEM a dinner!"), there are also some crude and tasteless lines that crash spectacularly ("I want to measure your respiration while they're gangbanging you"), as well as idiotic pieces of comedy (pretty much the entire transvestite sketch) that are more at the level of Benny Hill than Woody Allen. Some of the sketches (including the notorious "sheep" one) are too "one-joke" even for their brief running times. However, the entire film is largely redeemed by the seventh and final episode, which takes us inside the brain - and body - of a man on a date; this sketch is so imaginative and daring that, once you've seen it, you'll never forget it; it ranks right up there with such classic bits of comedy as the cabin scene in "A Night At The Opera". **1/2 out of 4.